Sports! Energy! SPORTS! ENERGY!

Obscure Energy Drinks

Wow, that sure looks like camel pee!

---

Recently, my roommate Zac and I discovered what is one of Salt Lake City’s best assets. NPS, a shopping complex whose full name has shall remain a mystery, is located on the west side of the tracks, Salt Lake City, Utah. It is just north of 1700 South, and just west of Redwood Road. This miraculous compound marketplace features, among other retail outlets, a grocery store that sells lost and damaged food-related items.

NPS’s grocery store is actually an amazing source of food: produce, bread, cheese, etc… all the staples. Many locally-grown and high-end organic items can be purchased here, as they apparently can get lost and damaged just like normal groceries. Provided you do not require a specific brand or item –rather you desire general categories such as “fruit” or “cereal”- you will be more-than-satisfied in this place.

Some genres tend to be much more reliably stocked than others. One such category of ultimate satisfaction available at NPS is

ENERGY DRINKS.

…Energy drinks that cost 25 to 33 cents. Think about that.

What is the ONLY reason people traditionally limit their intake of these little 8- and 16-fluid-oz. goodies? Cost! It is simply not economical to drink these- and piss away drink after drink at $1.99 or even $2.59 (convenience store price because you forgot to buy enough at the grocery store and you’re on a road trip)… but why not slam back an Ace, Joker, or Maximum Velocity at just a fraction of a dollar? At this rate, you might as well drink three or four (though the manufacturers suggest responsibly limiting intake to three per day).

Well, I can’t come up with ANY reasons to refrain from copious intake of such products.

It seems that many of these off-brand beverages are “lost” on purpose—I'd previously never seen many of these in my life… And the only way to figure out what’s in a can in to purchase it and drink it.

With this in mind, Zac and I decided to embark on a study which I will present here over the course of a few weeks’ (or months’) time. This shall be an exhaustive study that doesn’t test the quality of the drinks, but rather explores the sheer joy and ridiculousness of consuming them. I'm sure my liver agrees.